Private schools to reap hundreds of thousands in extra payments

Dozens of Sydney independent schools in line to have their funding reduced will instead receive bonus payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars this year from the federal government's private school funding package.

Oakhill College will receive almost $500,000, while St Scholastica's, Loreto Kirribilli and St Aloysius College will all get more than $350,000 in so-called low growth payments, according to figures released under Freedom of Information.

Under the needs-based funding reforms, over-paid independent schools should have their funding brought down to the Schooling Resource Standard benchmark over the next 10 years, and under-funded public schools should have their funding increased.

Redevelopment plans for Loreto Kirribilli, which is getting a $371,000 top-up payment from the federal government.Credit:Loreto Kirribilli

But last year, the federal government announced an extra $170.8 million would be spent in 2019 to ensure no private school lost any government funding during transition to a new way of calculating parents' capacity to contribute to their children's schooling.

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Of that, almost $9 million will be spent to ensure over-funded independent schools' funding grows by 3 per cent this year. More than $6 million of that will go to schools in NSW.

For example, St Pius X College in Chatswood receives $7.3 million in recurrent annual funding from the Commonwealth, which is almost twice as much as it should receive under the SRS. It charges $9000 a year for high school students.

Yet in 2019, it will also receive a special top-up payment of $369,600 to ensure that recurrent funding grows by 3 per cent this year. The schools do not need to apply for the money; it is automatically given to those that qualify.

The Department of Education documents were obtained under FOI by the NSW Teachers Federation. Its president, Maurie Mulheron, said the extra payments were another special deal at a time when money given to over-paid private schools should be reduced.

It showed that the government had abandoned needs-based funding, he said.

Oakhill College in Castle Hill.Credit:Simon Alekna

"Schools that are already well over-funded are now getting extra funding," Mr Mulheron said. "The special deals that have been done ... are further evidence that the Morrison government is about entrenching privilege."

Peter Goss, the education program director at the Grattan Institute, said the bulk of the 2019 funding was intended to smooth the transition to a new system of calculating the private school parents' ability to contribute to the cost of schooling.

"I find it hard to get exercised about that on a one-year basis," said Dr Goss. "The one worrying piece is that highly over-funded schools need to get less money in absolute terms if they are going to get back to the right level of funding.

"If the federal government is postponing or avoiding that process, they are squibbing one of the most important parts of [former Coalition education minister] Simon Birmingham's changes, which accepted for the first time that yes, some schools can lose a dollar."

A spokesman for the federal Department of Education said the money allowed schools to "plan with confidence" the 2019 school year while the new direct income measure is being refined. Such payments were normal practice, he said.

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"Due to historical funding arrangements, these schools were funded at higher percentages of their SRS by the Commonwealth," the spokesman said.

"This means recurrent funding for these schools grows by less than three per cent while they are transitioning to the new Commonwealth funding rate of 80 per cent of the SRS that will be in place by 2029.

"Schools need appropriate lead times to plan and adjust their business models to accommodate new levels of funding." There were similar low-growth top-up payments the year before.